Page 52 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

“I’m telling you, I felt his heartbeat,” Mark insists, his voice pitched high with desperation. “It wasn’t a machine. It wasn’t a rig. No suit feels that warm. No suit moves that way. I know what carried me out of there.”

A woman in a Believe T-shirt shakes her head, holding up her phone. “Mark, look at the wireframes. They released the internal schematics. It has a heating element in the chest to prevent fogging on the internal monitors. It’s all in the specs.”

“I don’t care about the specs!” Mark yells, his face flushing a deep, angry red. “I was there!”

Nobody believes him. They look at him with a mixture of pity and amusement. He’s become the fringe of the fringe, the man who was saved by a miracle and is now being told it was just good engineering. I have to look away. The guilt is a cold, sharp stone in my throat. I saved Rowan by making this man look like a lunatic. It’s a fair trade in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like a betrayal of the only real thing that’s happened in this forest in a hundred years.

I step into the gift shop. It’s eerily quiet. The HIDE & SEEK WORLD CHAMPION shirts are still on the rack, but they look different now. They’re not symbols of a mystery anymore. I walk behind the counter and start pulling the Bigfoot postcards off the display. They’re going into a box under the counter. We’re moving back to Cassidy Lodge: Historic Wilderness Retreat as of this morning.

The bell above the door chimes. Sarah walks in, her hair a mess and her expensive hiking boots caked in dried mud.

“Aethelgard wants to renegotiate,” she says. Her voice is flat, professional, and entirely devoid of the awe she had two days ago. “The Mountain Wraith documentary is being pivoted. We’re calling it The Great Cascade Con. It’s going to be an exposé on the intersection of digital virality and practical effects.”

“Sounds like a hit,” I say, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.

“It’ll be bigger than the original concept,” she says. “People love a mystery, but they love feeling like they’re ‘in’ on the secret even more. We want the suit, Wren. We want the Rowan Smith interview. And we want to film the ‘making of’ segments right here in your workshop.”

“There is no workshop,” I say quickly. “Toby’s studio is in Portland. And like I told you, Rowan is done. He’s a performer, Sarah, not a public figure. He’s already moved on to his next contract.”

She narrows her eyes. She’s smart. She’s a predator. She knows when a story is being managed. “You’re very protective of this ‘performer.’”

“I’m protective of my business partners,” I counter. “The deal was that we come clean together. We’ve done that. You have the story. You have the technical data. Now, leave the man alone.”

She stares at me for a long beat. I don’t blink. I’ve spent my entire life looking at paintings and figuring out which parts were original and which were restorations. I know how to hold a gaze until the other person looks for the exit. Sarah eventually nods, once, a sharp movement of her chin.

“Fine. But I want the prototype head. For the press tour.”

“I’ll have it couriered to you,” I say. I don’t have a prototype head, but I know Toby can make one that looks exactly like the version the world saw on the footage.

She leaves, and the shop feels even colder than before. I’ve won. The buyout offer for the lodge is dead, but the media rights for the ‘hoax’ documentary are going to pay off our debts. The Cassidy legacy is secure. The bank is happy. Marge and Walt have their jobs. The forest is quiet.

I walk to the back of the shop and pull Rowan’s shirt out of my pack. I press my thumb against the fabric. I’ve fixed everything. I’ve turned the most powerful being I’ve ever met into a punchline so he can have his peace back.

But the peace feels like an absence. I haven’t seen him since the storm. I haven’t heard the low, dry rumble of his voice or felt the strange, grounding heat of his presence. I told the world he was a man in a suit, and now I’m starting to feel like I’ve actually turned him into one—a phantom that only exists in my memory.

I walk out of the shop and around to the back of the log, heading to the tree line. The mud is drying, the forest reclaiming the paths the tourists carved out over the last few weeks. I stop at the edge of the old growth, where the shadows are deep.

“Rowan?” I whisper. My voice doesn’t even carry to the first branch.

I wait, listening for the snap of a twig. I listen for a correction, for a dry voice to tell me that I’ve over-explained again or that I’m being ridiculous. I listen for anything that isn’t the wind in the needles.

There is nothing. The mountain is just a mountain. The forest is just a forest. I’ve done my job too well. I’ve made the world stop looking, and in the process, I might have made it impossible for him to find me again.

I stand there until my toes are numb and the sun is high enough to burn through the canopy. I’ve traded the man for the mountain. I’ve traded the miracle for the mortgage. It was the only choice I had, but as I turn back toward the lodge, I don’t feel like a winner. I feel like the person who just burned down the only museum they ever loved to save the gift shop.

As I walk back inside, all I can think about is the way Rowan looked when he was bark-skinned and powerful, before I turned him into silicone. I don’t know if he’s out there watching me, or if he’s retreated so deep into the old growth that he’s forgotten the woman who lied to save him. I don’t know if I’ve earned his gratitude or his permanent silence. I just know that the lodge is safe, and I’ve never been more alone in my life.

I spend the afternoon playing the role of the harried administrator, answering the emails that mattered and ignoring the ones that were just vitriol from people who felt cheated out of a monster sighting. By four o’clock, the first ‘deep dive’ video from a prominent tech YouTuber is already live, titled The Physics of the Cassidy Suit: Why We Should Have Known. They are doing the work for me now, pointing out ‘glitches’ in the movement that they had previously hailed as ‘undeniable proof of biological complexity.’ The human brain is a funny thing; once you tell it it’s been tricked, it starts finding the strings even where there are none.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the lobby mirror as I walk toward the kitchen. I look like a stranger, the exhaustion beneath my eyes masked by a layer of professional triumph that felt like a coat of cheap varnish. I have become the ultimate curator of a fiction. The Cassidy name is no longer synonymous with a failing lodge or an eccentric hotline; we’re the masterminds of the decade’s greatest marketing stunt. Yet the victory tastes like copper and old tea.

Marge is in the kitchen, her back to me as she scrubs a heavy cast-iron skillet. The rhythmic sound of the scouring pad against the metal is the only noise in the room. Walt is sitting at the small table in the corner, staring out the window at the parking lot where a few straggler vans are finally packing up their gear.

“The bank called,” Walt says, not turning around. “Mr. Howard. Sounded like he wanted to buy us a drink. Said the news of the marketing collaboration has the board feeling very confident about the lodge’s long-term viability. They’re extending the credit line. They’re even talking about a low-interest renovation loan for the roof.”

“That’s great, Walt,” I say, but the words feel hollow. “That’s what we wanted.”

“Is it?” Marge asks, finally turning around. She doesn’t look angry, just profoundly sad. “The lodge is safe, Wren. You did that. But the woods... they feel different today. Too quiet. Like the mountain is holding its breath.”